Newt News

Unless you are an involved user of SUSE Studio, you will not have heard about what I would consider attacks that happened in the past couple of days. To summarize, a new user published their work to the gallery on SUSE Studio. However, instead of being content with letting their work gain popularity, this user down-voted the most well-constructed appliances on SUSE Studio in order to make their creation the "most popular". Newt OS was among the appliances down-voted.

I find this sabotage of a free software community disheartening to say the least. Free and open-source software is not a thing to be taken advantage of for personal achievement over community benefit. By this, I mean that to me, open-source represents the idea of community, collaboration, and connections. It does not have a place for sabotage.

I have left messages to the community of SUSE Studio, sent feedback to the SUSE company, and contacted Bryan Lunduke, a popular Linux user and member of the SUSE board, to ask that something be done in response to these actions against the SUSE Studio community. As for myself, I will continue to use SUSE Studio to create and publish Newt OS.

Google Chrome is, by many accounts, the world's most popular internet browser. It runs on many platforms, including Mac, Linux, and Windows, and offers tight integration of Google services (Drive, Gmail, Google+) Its rendering engine is sufficiently compatible with web technologies, and it passes benchmarks with flying colors.

So what's not to like? Shouldn't such a neat browser be default in Newt OS?

Google Chrome does a poor job of managing the resources it requires. Take these test results for instance: On my Linux system, a Firefox window with 4 tabs open uses about 600 MB of RAM. In Chrome, those same 4 tabs take up 1 GB of RAM. This is due to Chrome's use of "process isolation." This essentially means that when you open a new tab in Chrome, it will start a new system process, instead of building on the existing process. This prevents a single tab freeze from crashing the whole browser. As a side effect, a significantly larger amount of memory is used. While it may have been a good idea in concept, in my experience, large memory usage and separate processes means that Chrome will become sluggish when switching between tabs.

Additionally, Google Chrome does not integrate into systems very well. Chromebooks necessarily have a PDF reader built into the browser, as well as a print dialogue. Additionally, Google services like Google Drive will attempt to cache data on your hard drive to allow for offline work. All of these features are great on a Chromebook, but on any other systems, they're just a big pain. Printing becomes tedious and sometimes impossible, and often conflicts with system dialogues. For these reasons, I deem Google Chrome to be a bloated browser with unnecessary features galore.

Newt OS aims to be a system that anyone can use comfortably. I've put significant thought into application choices, and I can't include software that will 1) integrate poorly with the rest of the OS and 2) will not be usable on low-end computers.

I have nothing against those who use Google Chrome. It is not an inherently bad browser, and it does have some nice features. However, I feel that alternatives such as Chromium, Opera, and Firefox surpass Chrome in both usability and efficiency.

Many of you reading this may have been hearing about Apple a lot in the news recently. No, there's not a new iPhone (yet). Instead, Apple's CEO, Tim Cook is taking a stand to defend the rights of his customers.

So, why is this a big deal? If Apple has the means to provide aid to an investigation on a terrorist attack, shouldn't they be doing whatever they can to help? That's a question I've been asking myself, but to make a decision, one has to understand the entire situation. The FBI is in possession of an iPhone that is connected to a terrorist attack that occurred late last year in California. The FBI has asked Apple to write an update for the phone's software that would allow the FBI to bypass the phone's encryption and view data stored on the device. The FBI claims such software would only be used in this situation.

What the FBI is asking for is a means to gather user's data from ANY iOS device.

Apple is refusing to do so on the grounds that it violates every sense of security that Apple customers have. And you know what? I stand with Apple on this issue. I agree that an investigation should be held on an attack that lead to death, but this investigation should not be an opportunity to eliminate our independence to use technology. While I'm not Apple's biggest fan, I admire their commitment to their customers. Would Google or Microsoft do the same thing in this situation?

On a closing note, I'd like to remind you that Newt OS does offer encryption options during installation, as do most Linux distros.

I am very pleased and excited to announce a new spin of Newt OS, Newt OS Studio. This spin is designed with artists and creators in mind, and therefore includes a wide range of creative software. Newt OS Studio uses the LXDE desktop, and is based on Newt OS LXDE. I hope that my work helps provide the tools for someone else's creative endeavours. If you want to share any of your work you make with Newt OS Studio, send me an email, I'd love to see it!

After using the latest release of Newt OS LXDE on a regular basis for a few weeks, I realized that there were several issues that I had not resolved before release. While I have fixed as many of these problems as I could, there remains a problem with the YaST configuration program. For whatever reason, YaST would not run at all, and while the system is somewhat configurable from the LXDE settings, YaST offers many tools, including a live installer, that are too good to intentionally leave missing.

It is for these reasons that I am going to publish a new build of Newt OS LXDE. This new build is based on GeckoLinux, a project that is run by a very helpful person who wants to provide more user-friendly openSUSE spins. Newt OS LXDE will be based on the "Barebones" edition of GeckoLinux, which is essentially just openSUSE with some enhanced font and repository configurations.

So, yes. I have had to once again re-build Newt OS LXDE. However, I feel that this change will bring many improvements. And to make up for it, the upcoming release will include the wonderful Arc theme, one of my favorite themes as of late.

If you are currently running Newt OS LXDE and are satisfied with how it works, then there is no pressing reason to reinstall. However, if you need access to tools for advanced system configuration, then I recommend that you reinstall to ensure proper operation of YaST.

I think I'm due to make some apologies. First, sorry for the lack of activity in regards to this blog. A week into the new year, and this is the first post. I've been busy with school, a job shadow, homework, and family. Though, really, I guess most of this was to be expected with the holiday season and all. And I think that the release of Newt OS Gnome 16.1.0 sort of balances everything out.

I do have another apology to make. Though I have no way of knowing specifically how many people, if any, use/look at Newt OS, I can get a general idea of which flavors are more popular by the number of downloads. Of the approximately 170 downloads of the published Newt OS builds, only 15 of those have been of the KDE flavor. While I love the design of KDE, especially with the up and coming Plasma 5, I cannot justify supporting something that I have not done a good job of maintaining, and that has not been especially popular. Because of these reasons, it is with some sadness (but not a lot) that I say farewell to the KDE flavor of Newt OS.

For those 15 of you who downloaded it, and who may be running it, never fear, you will continue to receive support from openSUSE for the foreseeable future. This announcement brings the development and improvement of Newt OS KDE to a stop, at least for now. I will leave both published appliances available for download for those who wish to use them. Who knows, maybe someday I'll have a change of heart, and KDE will return.

The finalized build of Newt OS Gnome is available for download (via links on Downloads page). This build updates some software, finalizes the interface elements, and includes the new Newt OS Dark theme.This build is on par with build 3.2.0 as far as features and compatibility, and is the recommended version for new installations.Let me know what you think in the comments! Feedback is greatly appreciated!~Newt

After a good Christmas holiday, and looking forward to a nice break from school, I decided to work on a Christmas present for everyone. I know Newt OS has been lacking a dark theme, so I put in some time to make one! It's based on Numix like the light theme, and is similar in many respects. You can check it out in the screenshot below.

But that wasn't enough for me. Why make a theme that's only available on one OS? So, I've decided to start submitting some of the Newt OS artwork to Deviantart, so anyone can download it! Here's the link to my homepage: newt-os.deviantart.com/gallery/ I encourage everyone to try out the themes, even if Newt OS isn't your thing.

So let me know what you think of this in the comments. I think it's a good addition to a growing project.

After many weeks of waiting, Newt OS LXDE has been fully upgraded to openSUSE 42.1. This newest build is on par with, or an improvement over, the previous stable release (2.8.5), which was based on openSUSE 13.2.

So, what's new with this upgrade? I'm glad you asked! (If you've been following the beta development, there might not be any surprises here)

First and foremost, the biggest upgrade comes in the base system. Newt OS LXDE 16.1.0 features Linux kernel 4.1, upgraded from 3.16. LXDE is still at version 0.8.1, but almost every other software package has been updated, including Firefox, Libreoffice, Shotwell, etc.

LightDM has replaced LXDM as the display manager (Login Screen software) to provide a more flexible setup to be used across all Newt OS flavors.

As far as system artwork is concerned, the default theme has been tweaked slightly. Also, the panel features improved "show-desktop" and menu icons. Newt OS still uses the Moka icon set by default. Also included is a new set of wallpapers (see post from a couple weeks ago for details).

For those using Newt OS LXDE 2.X.X, I apologize, but there is no upgrade path at this time. If you want the new artwork, software, and features, you will have to do a clean install. Make sure to back up any data you don't want to lose, as a reinstall will wipe your disk.

This is not the end of development for Newt OS until next year. It is merely a point at which anyone can use it without fear of finding bug infestations. There will be more fun developments to come!